ENO's new production of Castor and Pollux does little to endear us to Rameau,
its unpopular French composer

Two good causes suffer setbacks in English National Opera’s new production of Castor and Pollux, the first of which is the composer himself. Revered in his native France, Jean-Philippe Rameau has done poorly in this country compared with most of his Baroque contemporaries, and ENO’s first engagement with the composer looked welcome. Alas, this performance won’t whet the appetite for future Rameau revivals.

Second, ENO is also enterprisingly presenting Barrie Kosky’s British operatic debut, but his messy telling of this legend of brotherly love and conflict, made more complicated by one brother’s immortality, won’t encourage further invitations from our companies. The Melbourne-born, Berlin-based director has earned an iconoclastic reputation for such projects as his Hanover Ring cycle, but on the evidence of this, Germany can keep him.

In Katrin Lea Tag’s mostly blank box of a set, he makes a convincing start, matching the boiling emotions of the piece with the physicality of his staging.

But thundering feet soon threaten to drown out the music, while infantile humour sabotages the nobility of the drama. Crotches are groped, genders bent, and there’s enough male nudity to justify the opera’s old nickname, “Castor and Bollocks”.

Musically, this is a more serious project. Playing from a raised pit, the orchestra projects a fleet and lithe performance under the solid direction of Christian Curnyn. Allan Clayton sings with bright-toned elegance as Castor, and Roderick Williams brings all his musical intelligence to Pollux, both of them relishing Amanda Holden’s poetic translation. The sisters, too, are strong, Sophie Bevan bright-toned as the twice-loved Telaire, and Laura Tatulescu as the embittered, vengeful Phebe.